Housestaff Quality Council Update
Heidi Charvet
Hi everyone,
I just wanted to send out a brief update from the latest Housestaff Quality Council (HQC) meeting with some updates that pertain to everyone. Laura and I are the first year reps and attend meetings once a month with members representing all the departments at Cornell to discuss issues relating to patient safety and quality important to housestaff.
So here are the updates…
1) Urine collection samples
- When ordering a UA, use UA reflex instead of UA with mandatory micro (the UA reflex order will automatically do the micro if there are any abnormalities in the UA and cuts down unnecessary work for the lab)
-Timed urine samples DO NOT need to be for 24 hours, but the nurse does need to let the lab know for how long the urine was collected for (8 hours is sufficient for most samples)
-When an order in the computer says “concentration” it actually means a spot sample
2) Eclipsys 5.5 Upgrade
-The upgrade will take place on January 28th (yay!) but the entire system will be down for 12 hours while this occurs (boo!)
-There is an E-learning course (yes another online course!) that must be completed by all residents pertaining to the new version of Eclipsys- it will be live Dec 19th
-If anyone would like to be a so-called super user (a tech term for someone who is the go-to person for EMR-related questions within the department), you can sign up for a Saturday-session learning course at COLE (email me if you want this information)
-If you are looking to make some extra money, you can sign up to be hired on Jan 28th to enter orders for inpatients (all the orders that were entered prior to the upgrade will disappear when the upgrade is done so someone has to enter them all in again)
3) EPIC
-Now has a hospital tab (instead of the IP admit tab) which allows you to see all ED notes and discharge summaries
4) Scanning Labs
-There is a system for scanning all labs to help track them once they are drawn- this is only done for ~10% of all labs at NYH
-The scanning process is important for tracking the labs and making sure they don’t get cancelled accidentally (the scanning prevents cancellation) and it is done on a designated computer on each of the units.
-It is important for us to learn how scan emergent labs so they can be tracked carefully and expedited from the moment they arrive in the lab
-If you need help scanning the labs, ask Sam Brenner (PGY-3), myself, or the RNs on the floor should also know how to do it
5) Discharge medications
-When you do your discharge summaries, every single discharge medication in the “pill box” needs to have an indication listed.
-Cornell has a very poor compliance with this based on the latest Joint Commission survey and we have only a few months to improve this (also it is good for patient care to have the indication actually listed on the discharge summary)
Sorry for the lengthy update. If you have any questions, feel free to e-mail me back and if you have any concerns related to patient safety and quality over the course of the year, please let Laura or I know.
Hope your Thanksgiving was great!
-Heidi
PGY-1, New York Presbyterian Hospital/Weill-Cornell Medical Center
Department of Internal Medicine
E-mail: hcc...@nyp.org
Cell: (914) 216-3054
Page: 11419
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